Thanks to a web of Royal diaries, letters, interviews with historians and biographers, and some old, dried pieces of Royal feces (for learning, you guys!), the public may now be able to have a better idea of just what a nightmare it would have been to be Queen Victoria's daughter.

A new BBC documentary reveals Victoria and Albert were "pretty awful parents," meddlng constantly in thee lives of their four sons and five daughters. According to Helen Rappaport, author of Magnificent Obsession and a contributor to the three-part documentary series, Victoria was especially disdainful of just about every aspect of parenthood, from pregnancy all the way to husband-picking for her daughters:

She [Victoria] hated being pregnant. She had prenatal and postnatal depression. She didn't breastfeed her children who she thought were horrible dribbling little things. She was not in the least bit maternal. Queen Victoria liked sex, but she didn't like the result.

Meanwhile, Albert saw his progeny as little more than creatures capable of doing well in school, and he made sure that all the kids fulfilled their academic potential, probably by employing the time-honored technique of berating them. Victoria was especially hard on her daughters, whose lives she micromanaged until the princesses grew so resentful that they revolted, becoming early champions of female independence.

Victoria and Albert were, however, way more involved than most aristocratic parents of the day, who would often just pawn their kids off on an army of nannies and housekeepers Daisy Buchanan-style. That proclivity for meddling is probably what made the Royals' domestic life so miserable, but we have to remember that this was a simpler, pre-internet time, when making your kids' lives miserable was one of three hobbies that a parent could use to fill up the long hours of the day.